Firesheep, an add on for Firefox released in October 2010, watches connections on your LAN for anybody connecting to a website using the HTTP protocol, and lets the user of the add on steal passwords. Since the vast majority of websites still use HTTP, Firesheep was extremely effective. This woke up the tech world to the insecure and outdated nature of HTTP, by showing how easily it can be compromised.

The alternative, much more secure version of HTTP is the HTTPS protocol (the s stands for secure). HTTPS encrypts connections using strong SSL 256-bit or higher encryption. This way it is much harder for an attacker to view your password and traffic. This has pushed many websites to encrypt their connections, but the transition is happening slowly. Only recently have large websites started to add HTTPS encryption, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google (in beta).

Google AdSense is a very useful and popular service from Google which displays targeted advertising, either text or graphical, on your website. Advertisers pay based both on the number of views an ad receives, called “impressions” and based on the number of actual clicks, with varying rates.

Google keeps 32% of the revenue and passes on the rest to you, the publisher. AdSense has many advantages over directly connecting with advertisers; mostly that Google does all the work for you. Google finds appropriate advertisers and works with them so you can focus on your content. This way the process is painless, requiring only a Google account and five minutes of setup.

1 Year FanExtra Membership (over 450 Resources) – only $29

For those of you who don’t know MightyDeals provide huge discounts on reputable design services and products. Personally we’re thrilled to be featured, and have decided to offer our annual FanExtra memberships at a massively discounted price of $29 (regular price $69).

Warning: This tutorial is NOT FOR BEGINNERS, it’s for people who know their way around Photoshop and are looking to further their design knowledge/skills. If you aren’t comfortable with radial gradients, overlay layers and clipping mask layers and have a good foundation level of artistic skill this tutorial probably isn’t for you. Oh, and you should definitely have a graphics tablet; it would be undiluted madness to try this with a mouse!

Adam Everett Miller—our Aetuts+ editor—was recently surprised by his talented wife, Katie. She redecorated his home workspace. He loves it!
Here are some comments from Adam when he posted about it on Aetuts+ a few days ago:

Cgtuts+ is Envato’s tutorial site about computer graphics in all its forms.

Cgtuts+ is a source of learning on all aspects of computer graphics. We pump out regular tutorials on Maya, 3Ds Max, Cinema 4D, ZBrush, Blender, Mudbox and more. We cater to beginner, intermediate and advanced CG artists.

Members Only Tutorial

This tutorial is available exclusively to our FanExtra members. In order to read the tutorial and download it’s original .psd source file you must sign up as a FanExtra member.

If you sign up today you get access to over 450 design files, including tutorial source files, members only tutorials, vectors, icon packs, texture packs and more! You can also access our huge collection of .psd website interfaces such as this one.

Final Image

Activetuts+

Exclusive Freebie: Ten Fab Filter Effects for Your Flash Textfields

If you enjoyed Muhammed Abid’s tutorial on glassifying your text with Flash filters, you’ll love this Exclusive Freebie from frequent author Carlos Yanez. It’s a set of ten such effects, ranging from gold to bubble gum, which you can easily copy and paste to apply to any text in any of your Flash projects.

If you enjoyed Patrik Larsson’s ebook “Marketplace Tips & Tricks“, we have some great news for you. He’s been working hard on a significantly expanded second edition. He’ll be finished in a month or two.

Patrik was kind enough to give us an in-depth interview about the update. His enthusiasm is infectious. Not only has he got me excited about the book, but it seems he’s got half the marketplace authors involved in the project!

It’s that time again, time for the release of the latest Envato Community Podcast. In episode 11, we were fortunate enough to have Amanda Hackwith on with us. Amanda is a RockablePress extradonaire and gaming junky. Amanda talks with us about what it’s like managing the publishing side of the company, writing a book, and of course her amazing gaming collection. Of course, we have plenty of marketplace news and updates included. Lastly, be sure to listen all the way through for some hidden gems and special music, we apologize in advance for our questionable taste of music!

NOTE: This post was originally posted on March 22nd 2009. However, we still to this day have readers who are confused with how to use the pen tool. This tutorial has helped a lot of people since it was first pubilshed, so we hope that whether this is your first time reading it, or you’re using it as a refresher, it’s helpful for you.

Having been doing Internet marketing and developing websites that rely heavily on natural search engine traffic for the past few years I can say without a doubt the largest challenge that site owner’s face is getting traffic into their website and that doesn’t include getting highly targeted traffic which is looking for your content. "Build and they will come" is nothing more than a slogan on your car bumper sticker.

The second largest challenge, of course, is converting that traffic into your desired result. That could be newsletter signup, sale, new reader, blog comment, new StumbleUpon fans or Twitter followers, or even just a new friends on your facebook profile.

Aetuts+ is a site made to house and showcase some of the best After Effects tutorials around. We publish tutorials that not only produce great effects, but explain them in a friendly, approachable manner. We also stock up links to tutorials, articles, presets and plugins from around the web to help you get the most out of After Effects.

If you’re interested in writing a tutorial for the site, you can learn about the submission process on our Write a Tutorial page.

Many of you might not be aware that the Envato marketplaces have an API that can be used to handle everything from verifying purchases, to displaying your most recent items, to tracking featured files, to reviewing private account information, like your recent sales and account balance. But the question is: are you using it?

In addition to displaying your own items, if you’re smart, you can attach your referral id to earn some extra passive income in the process!

35 Photoshop Tutorials to Create Surreal Artwork

Surrealism is clearly a popular style within traditional art, yet has also become increasing popular with the digital community. Digital art is a great medium to explore surrealism, as within Photoshop you can totally manipulate photographic elements and contort them into an alternate reality. In the following round-up we have collected a set of well-written and beautiful surrealist photoshop tutorials to help you master your technique.

Software engineering, messy rooms, “quality is better than quantity”, and going out with friends. Today we meet Carlos Viloria from GraphicRiver and ActiveDen.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from, what do you do for a living?

Hi, My name is Carlos Viloria and I’m a Software Engineer, developer and web designer (Flash, AS2/AS3 and HTML). I live in the beautiful city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, and the city is well know for its kind people. I spend most of my time making files to sell on GraphicRiver, and also working as a freelancer.

NOTE: This post was originally posted on April 8th 2011. However, I continually get emails from people struggling to understand proper non-destructive workflows. This tutorial has helped a lot of people since it was first pubilshed, so we hope that whether this is your first time reading it, or you’re using it as a refresher, it’s helpful for you.

5 Incredibly Useful Non-Destructive Photoshop Techniques

Non-destructive workflows are vital to being a great Photoshop designer. However, they are often overlooked by people. Personally, I was pretty late to pick up non-destructive Photoshop techniques – to my peril! After learning these techniques my workflow increased dramatically, and I was able to start editing my images much easier after finishing compositions.

30 Gorgeous and Usable Mac Applications

While windows is used practically everywhere, Mac OS is mostly admired and used by designers, developers and creative modern companies. Mac applications are often really well-designed, and kick-ass with a gorgeous interface. In the following collection we have listed 30 most loved, practical and stunning applications for the Mac operating system.

After months of planning, I’m pleased to introduce our $41,000 web developer competition on Nettuts+ and CodeCanyon. Officially launching today, we want you to…build something! Do a kick-ass job, and you’ll win everything from cash, to an iPad 2, to the 3DS, to a seemingly never-ending string of subscriptions to amazing online services.

Create A Mixed Media Piece Using Photoshop

In this tutorial I will be showing you how to take any drawing and turn it into a mixed media masterpiece using Photoshop. We will be combining some digital painting techniques with textures and light effects to achieve the desired result. I will be showing you how you can use these techniques for just about any type of design. If you are ready to get started then let’s go!
Resources

This week at Envato we tried to fool you, animated our podcast, and launched a new AppStorm site. Lance joined the RIA Radio podcast team, and we dug an old photo out of the archives. Details after the jump!

Thinking Beyond the Digital Medium

For almost three years PSD.FanExtra has focused almost exclusively on tutorials teaching graphic and digital design. However, as covered in some of our recent articles, it’s really important to constantly expand your skill-set, and explore other visual mediums.

I’ve always been a keen artist, and try to integrate this area of my creative talent into my digital work whenever possible. However, I recognize that not everyone is born with these kinds of skills, and often it’s necessary for aspiring artists to learn the fundamentals of drawing before starting their quest towards creative utopia.

Therefore I’ve decided to start a newly weekly post series focusing on non-digital art tutorials. I’m calling this post series ‘Friday Art School’ and will be creating some really in depth drawing and modeling tutorials to help inspire you all.